Projects for old Raspberry Pi 1/2 & Pi Zeros

[Retro6]

I have quite a few older Raspberry Pi's model A & B's and lots of older Pi Zeros and I would like to put a few to use as there are a few projects that I would like to do that could involve using them.

The first is building a weather station... it doesn't have to measure anything, alls I need it to do is connect to the internet/connected to a weather server do a weather report every 15 mins that will be connected to a PMR446 radio without the other junk connected to it such as a mouse/keyboard and monitor... I will need it to start up automatically and connect to a weather speech server that will be broadcast on one of the PMR446 channels every 15 minutes.

Would that be possible?

The second project involves an old Bakelite telephone, Its kinda hard to explain what I want to do but I will try my best... so I want to be able to pick up the phone and hear an old voice at the other end like what they have at the Bletchley Park museum.

 

[Diddums]

What about a music video with all your Henry vacuum cleaners, like those old floppy disc vids?

 

[Feek]

I will need it to start up automatically and connect to a weather speech server that will be broadcast on one of the PMR446 channels every 15 minutes.

How are you checking the channel isn't in use already?

Because it would be totally irresponsible to just fire off a transmission every fifteen minutes without listening first.

 

[NickK]

Issue is the RPI OS needs to support 32bit. The old RP OS got dumped for a debian based Raspberry OS but Debian has just dropped 32bit support with the last release. So all the 32bit support is EOL/S for 32bit RPIs is between now and 2030..

 

[Diddums]

How are you checking the channel isn't in use already?

Because it would be totally irresponsible to just fire off a transmission every fifteen minutes without listening first.

Morse code porn innit

 

[Feek]

Morse code porn innit

You been checking out my signature(s)?

 

[Retro6]

How are you checking the channel isn't in use already?

Because it would be totally irresponsible to just fire off a transmission every fifteen minutes without listening first.

Who cares its not like the band is busy with activity... its dead like everything else today.

Yep just checked.... its dead. We are in 2026 now, time too liven things up a bit.

 

[Retro6]

You been checking out my signature(s)?

How is the shack now days?

I don't really do HF as I am limited to V/UHF so its pretty quiet minus air band & marine band monitoring and TG91 on DMR

 

[Feek]

Who cares its not like the band is busy with activity... its dead like everything else today.

Yep just checked.... its dead. We are in 2026 now, time too liven things up a bit.

People do care. You should always listen before you transmit to make sure the frequency is clear. 446 is quite lively here, just checked and a couple of the channels are in use.

And you know broadcasting on 446 is illegal, right?

How is the shack now days?

Great! I’ve been using some new software to access the cluster that syncs with Club Log to show me new slots so I’ve been picking up a decent number recently. Even with 312 confirmed, it’s surprising how many new slots there are to work.

It’s CQWW this weekend but I’ve still not decided what I’m going to do. Very strong winds are forecast so I may not want to turn the aerial too much.

 

[Retro6]

I think I'm going to build an AllStar Node for the 70cm band.